Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the
National Post, is some good stuff and a persistent
LIE that the Liberals and NDP continue to tell:
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/merger+agenda+Topp+says/5367840/story.htmlNDP merger not on the agenda, Topp says
Tobi Cohen, Postmedia News
Sept. 8, 2011
OTTAWA . The backroom New Democrat behind the 2008 coalition wouldn't hesitate to strike another deal with the Liberals should the Conservatives win a minority in the next election.
In an interview, NDP president Brian Topp said on Wednesday that a merger of the two parties is not on the agenda but that a coalition remains a "perfectly legitimate" option.
"If Canadians elect a minority Parliament, in which there's a progressive and centrist majority that finds a way to work together, then we should [work together] because that's what the majority of the public have elected," he said. "We don't have to become Liberals to win."
His comments come after the Canadian Autoworkers union expressed support for an NDP-Liberal merger and MP Pat Martin proclaimed he would run for the leadership if no other candidates promoted the idea. Although former prime minister Jean Chrétien has been pushing for it among Liberals, current interim Liberal leader Bob Rae has said the merger option is not on the table.
While nobody has officially entered the race to replace Jack Layton, who lost his battle with cancer last month - the rules of which will be set by the party's federal council on Friday - Mr. Topp is among the supposed frontrunners contemplating a bid.
He's also the author of How We Almost Gave the Tories the Boot: The Inside Story Behind the Coalition, which offers an in-depth look at the 2008 partnership from his standpoint as one of the lead negotiators. The coalition ultimately fell apart when Parliament was prorogued.
Mr. Topp suggested the idea of working together with other parties actually resonated with voters who chose the NDP in unprecedented numbers, especially in Quebec, where a record 59 New Democrats were elected.
"A key element of our success, in my opinion, is the way we played our cards in the last Parliament," he said.
"It was a mixed success in public opinion in English Canada, but the idea of replacing the Harper government with a progressive coalition was very popular in Quebec and it caused Quebecers to think about politics in new ways.... It caused them to get out of the idea that they needed to vote defensively in federal politics."
Mr. Topp, who will announce in short order whether he intends to enter the race, remains a relative unknown among Canadian voters who, pundits suggest, elected the party based largely on its popular and charismatic late leader.
That said, the fluently bilingual, Quebec-born Topp is well-known in party circles, having served as national campaign director in the 2006 and 2008 elections. He co-ordinated the campaign war room in 1997 and 2004 and was deputy chief of staff to Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow in the 1990s. In the last campaign, Mr. Topp co-chaired the committee responsible for the party's platform and he co-ordinated the leaders debate.
While deputy leader Thomas Mulcair, another likely top contender for the leadership, is viewed as both the party's face and key promoter in Quebec, Mr. Topp has been helping mobilize the NDP in the province since he began working for the party in Montreal in the mid1980s, under Ed Broadbent.
In fact, he organized the campaign that got Phil Edmonston elected in Chambly in a 1990 byelection - the NDP's first-ever seat in Quebec.
"I haven't run as an MP and I'm not an MP, but I have attended more NDP caucus meetings than any of the likely leadership candidates," Mr. Topp said, adding many of his suggestions during those meetings were adopted.
"I haven't stood up in Parliament and read a question, but I've written many of them and I've also spent seven years co-ordinating the responses of a government to Question Period, so I'm quite familiar with parliamentary work." Mr. Topp said the party's next leader must focus on "bulking up" the party to ensure it wins a majority of seats in the next election and building a plan for its first mandate.
The "good stuff" is that, of course,
"a coalition remains a "perfectly legitimate" option." That's 100% true.
The
lie then follows, in Topp's own words:
"If Canadians elect a minority Parliament, in which there's a progressive and centrist majority that finds a way to work together, then we should [work together] because that's what the majority of the public have elected ..."That's arrant nonsense and it is a
lie, but it is a lie that the anti-Harper folks love to tell. The "majority of the public" did not, in e.g. 2006 or 2008, elect a "progressive and centrist majority." A plurality of the public voted for the Conservatives, smaller groups voted for an array of parties other than the Conservatives but none, not one single Canadian voted for a "progressive and centrist majority" or anything else, except for
n MPs from four different parties (plus an Independent or two).
Now Brian Topp, like most "progressive and centrist" commentators, is a smart guy; because he's a smart guy he must know that what he's spouting is incorrect. People who, knowingly, spout incorrect information are
liars ... Topp is in 'good,' ""progressive and centrist" company, many of them
lie with practiced ease.
